


Once More, With Feeling

by daisyisawriter91



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Do-Over, Female My Unit | Byleth, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Older Characters, Post-Canon, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28587066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyisawriter91/pseuds/daisyisawriter91
Summary: For not the first time, Felix returns to the grave of his beloved. Only this time, he doesn't stay alone.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Once More, With Feeling

Long ago, when Felix was a teenager, he vowed that romance would never befall him. He’d seen Sylvain strike out with a beautiful girl over a hundred times, he’d seen Ingrid pine after those very same girls.  
He couldn’t stand to see it. He vowed nothing and no one would ever make him as pathetic as them.

The very next year, he met Claude von Riegan, and his vow crumbled into dust. It held together as long as it could, Felix’s own desire not to fall in love fought valiantly.  
But in the end, it was no match for Claude’s stubborn pursuit. In the end, it was no match for Felix’s overwhelming desire for Claude.

Which was what led him here.

When he looked down at his hands, sometimes he couldn’t recognize them. Battle scarred as ever, but the passage of time had taken its toll on his body. Wrinkles and age spots littered his skin, veins more prominent than ever. If he looked in the mirror, he would see a shock of silver hair to rival Ashe’s and lines heavily on his face.  
To the immense surprise of his friends and even his former self, many of them were laughter lines, hard earned by Claude’s side.

Now he stood beside no one.

Felix sat cross-legged before the grave, cane resting on his lap, glaring holes into the ostentatious headstone.

It wasn’t what Claude would want. He could only imagine Claude in the afterlife trying to smash the stone, ranting about how the stone could have been used as building material or some such.  
Claude was the eastern winds, strong and unrelenting. He could not and would not ever be contained.

Yet it seemed tradition outweighed the wishes of a king, much to Felix’s immense chagrin.

“I hate what you’ve done to me,” Felix’s voice was rough. From age or heartache or both, it was impossible to say. “You’ve completely broken me, you know.”

Felix heaved a heavy sigh, resting his forehead in his hand.

“In every future I could conceive, you were never the one I thought would die first. I always thought it would be me. Sometimes it was during the war, and I fell in battle due to my own recklessness. Perhaps protecting you. How very unlike me. At least, most would have thought. You always knew better, didn’t you?”

The headstone mocked him with its silence. Words stared back at him, instead, frustratingly unmoving. Felix wanted to destroy the words.

_Claude von Riegan - Khalid of the Winds  
1162 - 1248  
Esteemed king, beloved husband, kind father  
Brightest mind of Almyra_

How true those words were. How Felix loathed them. It was everything he always knew about Claude, seeing it quite literally set in stone was too much for him to comprehend.

“I hate that I loved you. That I still love you. And I hate that I know I will love you long after Fódlan is destroyed and nothing remains of us other than stupid stones.”

It was a warm day, but not oppressively so. A soft breeze drifted through the pine trees, sending a slight rustling around him. It was a day he could imagine spending with Claude. A type he often _had_ spent with his husband after he’d been coerced out of guard duty Claude insisted he did not need to have.  
Being a king never _did_ stop Felix’s vigilance.

The mocking sun glinted off his wedding band, a shining silver in the new darkness of Felix’s world. Or perhaps what made it seem even darker.  
Though the day could not have been brighter, Felix couldn’t appreciate it. It was a miracle he could even recognize it was a sunny day, at all.

Reality had ceased to be with Claude’s final exhale. Felix had clasped his hand as it happened, and felt the world slow to a stop at the same time it passed before his eyes.

Felix hadn’t realized how much he’d come to depend on Claude’s presence as something of a lifeline. His easy smile a ray of sunshine, his eyes a home to enter, his arms the only embrace Felix would ever ask for.

And it had been taken from him. On an unfittingly bright day, just like the one Felix currently lives in, it all disappeared. With a weak smile and one last breath used to say his final words.  
 _“I love you, Felix.”_  
He’d used the time before to say more. Claude, always the talker, always the planner. At first it annoyed Felix, but soon enough, he grew to love it. Love everything about Claude.  
But he’d used his last breath to make sure Felix knew he was loved for one final time. It was just like him.

“I love you, Khalid. I wish I would have told you more. But...I’m glad you knew. You always knew. You had a way of saying things I thought so I never had to.”  
Claude did not reply. He never would, again.

Felix ached.  
He ached more than any battle wound had ever hurt, he ached more than the grief of losing his father or brother. This was different.  
It felt like his heart would never quite recover. He would be doomed to this for as long as he drew breath.

If he was guessing, it wouldn’t be much longer. A broken heart could not support an old man for too long, after all.

He didn’t stir when he heard soft footsteps in the grass. He didn’t bother to look up when she sat beside him, folding her legs beneath her. He didn’t have to.

“Hello, Professor.” He greeted. He had never taken to calling her Archbishop. To him, she would always be Professor Byleth. “How long have you been here?”  
“Not long.” She replied, and her voice was unchanged in over sixty years. If he looked over, he knew she would look much the same. “I heard what happened. I had to pay my respects to Claude, and check on you.”  
He scoffed. “I’m a grandfather, I don’t need my school teacher to check on me, anymore.”  
“Then how about a friend?”

A begrudging smile made its way onto his face with a soft chuckle.  
“That, I’ll take. There aren’t too many left, these days.” 

Dimitri had fallen the previous year, succumbed to his old age, Dedue not long after. Sylvain, in a skirmish with Sreng that had claimed the life of Ashe, as well. Ingrid, to illness. Dorothea, to her own heartbreak over Ingrid.  
Annette, Marianne, Ferdinand, Lorenz, Caspar, Leonie, all of his classmates...gone.

Only Byleth and Mercedes remained. And Felix, of course, as the goddess’s cruel, twisted sense of humor.

Byleth didn’t say anything for a long time, and Felix didn’t prompt her. Though she’d grown more talkative in her years as Archbishop, she still spoke little, saving her words for when they would be best served.

“If you had the chance to redo your relationship with Claude,” she began. “Would you do anything differently?”

The bird song filled his mind as he thought back on his six decades with the man of his dreams. He tapped his chin with his cane, furrowing his brow.

“No. I don’t think I would. We had bad times, yes, but I wouldn’t change them. We had good times, too.” He finally settled on.

Maybe as a brazen young man, his answer would have been different. Maybe he would have had a list of things he could change about his relationship with the love of his life.  
As it was, the only Felix would change - but knew he couldn’t - was the ache. His body’s way of crying out for its missing piece.

Felix looked back over at Byleth to find a soft smile on her face.  
“I’m glad. He wouldn’t want you obsessing.”  
Felix rolled his eyes, feeling his fond expression settling on his mouth. Many of his wrinkles had formed from that very face.  
“He always _was_ a hypocrite, wasn’t he?” 

Byleth reached over and patted his shoulder.

“I hope you enjoy, Felix.” She murmured, softly.   
He only had a moment to process his confusion before the world went dark.

Felix awoke to bird song, a soft breeze ruffling his hair. Early morning sun tugged at his eyelids.  
He rolled over onto his back, feeling a mattress shift slightly beneath his weight.

He was in bed. For some reason, he could have sworn he was at a...a graveyard?

_Claude._

He could see Claude’s gravestone clear as day in his head, the one haunting vision that stuck with him in the waking world.

Felix’s eyes burst open. He flew upwards, already kicking off the covers. Where was his sword?

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Where’s the fire, Fe?”

_No._ It couldn’t be. Somehow, it couldn’t be. He’d gone to sleep by his side, but...an entire lifetime had passed by. He’d been eighty-eight years old, hadn’t he?

Yet there he stood. Claude von Riegan, draped lovingly in the sunlight, as though it was painted exactly to accentuate every soft curve and sharp angle.  
He had backed a few steps away from the window, and towards Felix.

“Remember? Nothing’s happening today. You and I have the whole day together, we can take our time.” Claude reminded, gently.  
“Right, of course…” Felix muttered.

Of course he remembered. A rare day off for King Khalid, how could he possibly forget that? It was such a novel occasion, these days.

Claude settled gently on the bed, beginning to run his hand through Felix’s hair.  
“Are you alright? You were twitching in your sleep.”

Felix looked up into Claude’s divine face. Stubble had grown over his chin, growing around a few scars decorating his jaw. His eyes were still sharp and crystalline, but soft whenever they glanced at Felix.

“Never been better.” Felix answered, allowing the smile he felt to show. He reached up, yanking Claude down by his shirt collar to press their lips together.

It certainly wasn’t the most beautiful kiss they’d ever had, and definitely not the least painful. But it meant the world to Felix.

It was the dawn of a new day, one he could begin with the love of his life.

He had he strange feeling he needed to thank Byleth...


End file.
